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| Data Driven Instruction | Professional Development | One-to-One Computing | Information Technology Planning |
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November 2004 Acrobat 101By Tammy Stephens Adobe Acrobat does a lot more than make PDF files. Acrobat is a suite of software tools that can make life easier. The three we will be discussing in this article are Reader , Writer and the Distiller. Almost all computers have Reader , formally called Acrobat Reader . This software is free and can be downloaded from the Internet: http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html. Reader allows you to view and print PDF (portable document files). The advantage of PDF files is that they can be viewed in almost any operating system. This allows files to be easily shared between computers via email as attachments or downloaded from the Internet. Reader has some handy navigation tools built into it, which is nice for navigating larger documents. If the author has created bookmarks, or internal links, you can click on the While Reader is free, when you purchase the Acrobat Suite you also receive Writer and Distiller . Writer is most often used to create quick and dirty PDF files on the fly. When you install Acrobat you are actually installing a “virtual printer”. Writer is actually a printer driver that converts non-PDF documents into PDF files. You use Writer as your printer. The application sort of takes a picture of your document. This is nice because the recipients will see the document just as you created it and the document's appearance won't be distorted when it is transported over the web. Click here to view directions for creating PDF files. ( Note: Adobe is not the only software that can create PDF files. A number of third party software exists such as BCL Technologies, Inceni Technology, Mpasoft, Image Solutions, Inc. Quite software and Extensis.) Often we think of PDF files as Read Only files, but actually there is a quite a bit you can do with these files. For example, you can use Acrobat to capture Internet sites to view offline by creating a PDF file of the entire site. When you capture the site, all of the links will be left intact allowing you to navigate the site just as you would on the Internet. This could be useful for schools that do not have fast Internet connections available in their labs or classrooms. It can also be used for sharing sites such as at a conference where Internet access is not available or to create a kiosk, where you want users to only be able to navigate certain pages. It also can improve security because students cannot stray off the site. The ISTE article The Internet Unplugged by Richard Culatta Learning & Leading with Technology November 2003 pgs. 6-13 gives examples of how this has been used in unwired classrooms to give students the experience of finding information on web pages. Click here to view directions for creating PDF files from a web site. Other useful things you can do with Writer :
Distiller is very similar to Writer , except that it gives the user more options and allows you to do customizations. For example, Distiller would be a good choice if you have a large document with a lot of graphics and you want to compress the file to make it easier to distribute and download. Next Month:
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tab on the left hand corner to view them. The toolbar also includes buttons 
quickly moving between pages. Buttons include: First Page Button, Previous Page Button, Next Page Button and Last Page Button.You can also use thumbnails, tiny pictures of each page, to navigate documents by clicking on the 
tab on the upper left corner of the Navigation Pane.